Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Obamacare's Path Forward; A.I. Vs. M.D.; And Hacking Cells
FiveThirtyEight: The Future Of Obamacare Is In Trump’s Hands
After seven years, House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Trump announced Friday that Republican attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act have, at least temporarily, been laid to rest. But that doesn’t mean that health care reform is over. Far from it. (Anna Maria Barry-Jester, 3/27)
The New Yorker: A.I. Versus M.D.
One evening last November, a fifty-four-year-old woman from the Bronx arrived at the emergency room at Columbia University’s medical center with a grinding headache. Her vision had become blurry, she told the E.R. doctors, and her left hand felt numb and weak. The doctors examined her and ordered a CT scan of her head. (Siddhartha Mukherjee, 3/26)
Politico Magazine: Four Things Trump Could Do Right Now To Fix Obamacare
The president keeps suggesting on Twitter and in speeches that he can benefit politically by letting Obamacare implode, blaming Democrats, and forcing them to accept a new version of repeal. But that would be a precarious path — not only for the millions of Americans who could lose coverage or see their premiums skyrocket, but for the Republicans who control Washington and might struggle to duck responsibility for the chaos on their watch. (Michael Grunwald, 3/28)
The New York Times: Those Indecipherable Medical Bills? They’re One Reason Health Care Costs So Much.
The catastrophe struck Wanda Wickizer on Christmas Day 2013. A generally healthy, energetic 51-year-old, she suddenly found herself vomiting all day, racked with debilitating headaches. When her alarmed teenage son called an ambulance, the paramedics thought that she had food poisoning and didn’t take her to the emergency room. Later, when she became confused and groggy at 3 a.m., her boyfriend raced her to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in coastal Virginia, where a scan showed she was suffering from a subarachnoid hemorrhage. A vessel had burst, and blood was leaking into the narrow space between the skull and the brain. (Elisabeth Rosenthal, 3/29)
The Economist: No Deal Donald: Republicans Pull Their Health-Care Bill
For seven years Republicans have run against Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), calling it socialism, a government power-grab and accusing the law of instituting “death panels” that could deny older Americans care by bureaucratic fiat. When Barack Obama was still in the White House and wielded the veto pen of a president, House Republicans voted more than 50 times to repeal the ACA, knowing that these were empty show votes. (3/24)
The New Yorker: The Health-Care Debacle Was A Failure Of Conservatism
The health-care-failure finger-pointing got under way well before Friday, when Donald Trump and Paul Ryan cancelled a House vote on the American Health Care Act. A day earlier, aides to the President let it be known that he had come to regret going along with Ryan’s idea of making health care his first legislative priority.In the coming days and weeks, there will be more of this blame shifting, and, in truth, there is plenty of blame to go around. (John Cassidy, 3/24)
Huffington Post: The Death Of Trumpcare Is The Ultimate Proof Of Obamacare's Historic Accomplishment
The Affordable Care Act overcame the tea party protests of 2009 and the Democrats losing their filibuster-proof Senate majority in 2010. It survived two challenges in front of the Supreme Court and the calamitous rollout of healthcare.gov.Now it has withstood the attempt to replace it with the American Health Care Act, better known as Trumpcare. (Jonathan Cohn, 3/26)
WIRED: Scientists Hack A Human Cell And Reprogram It Like A Computer
In the last couple of decades, biologists have been working to hack the cells’ algorithm in an effort to control their processes. They’ve upended nature’s role as life’s software engineer, incrementally editing a cell’s algorithm—its DNA—over generations. (Sophia Chen, 3/27)
